Time Exposure (Alo Nudger)

by John Lutz

  Also by John Lutz

  BUYER BEWARE

  NIGHTLINES

  THE RIGHT TO SING THE BLUES

  RIDE THE LIGHTNING

  DANCER’S DEBT

  THICKER THAN BLOOD

  DEATH BY JURY

  Time Exposure

  John Lutz

  SPEAKING VOLUMES, LLC

  NAPLES, FLORIDA

  2011

  Time exposure

  Copyright © 1989 by John Lutz

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

  9781612321929

  Table of Contents

  Also by John Lutz

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift

  My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of Thee a gift.

  —BYRON, Childe Harold

  Who knows what may be slumbering in the background of time!

  —SCHILLER, Don Carlos

  1

  At first they thought she was crossing the street to buy doughnuts. Nudger was seated at the stainless steel counter in Danny’s Donuts, just passing the time, when he noticed the sad-eyed Danny gazing beyond him out the wide, greasespotted window at Manchester Avenue. Swiveling on his stool, Nudger saw a slender blond woman pause for a bus to pass, then, with a cautious glance for eastbound traffic, run the rest of the way across the rain-glistening street. She had on high heels but still moved gracefully and with surprising speed. A treat to watch.

  “Ain’t she a cute little bit of pastry? Danny said. He related everything to his baking. The ultimate compliment would have been to call the woman a Dunker Delite-Danny’s specialty. No doubt he needed a closer look at her before granting her that culinary honor.

  He wasn’t going to get a closer look. The woman squinted up at the low gray sky, as if to assure herself that it was still raining, then veered slightly and opened the door next to that of the doughnut shop. Nudger heard the metallic scrape of the latch and the vacuum swish of the door closing. The door that led to a narrow stairwell, that led to a door on the second-floor landing, that led to the center of the web: Nudger’s office.

  Danny grinned. “A client, Nudge!”

  Nudger sort of resented his tone of voice, which suggested that clients were so infrequent they rated amazement. It wasn’t like that at all. Surprise, maybe, but not amazement.

  Nudger listened to the ascending tap tap tap of high heels on the steep wooden stairs on the other side of the west wall. Then silence. She’d reached the landing. He listened for a knock on his office door but couldn’t hear it. Too far away. Wall too thick.

  He said, “What if she’s here to serve a subpoena?” His former wife, Eileen, was after him with rare vengeance to pay back alimony into her already swollen bank account.

  Danny flicked the counter with the frayed gray towel he always kept tucked in his belt. Crumbs flew like shrapnel. “Naw, not her, Nudge. She don’t look like no subpoena server.”

  “They’re tricky sometimes.”

  “Not that tricky.”

  “Remember the time I thought I was accepting literature to get rid of a Jehovah’s Witness?”

  “This one’s different.”

  Nudger wasn’t so sure about that. He was more cynical than the simple and trusting Danny. Everyone was more cynical than Danny, who said, “Only one way to find out, Nudge.”

  True enough. Nudger left the uneaten half of his Dunker Delite on its white paper napkin. It reminded him of something wounded lying on a stretcher. He nodded good-bye to Danny, got down off his stool, and carried his foam cup of acidic coffee out of the doughnut shop.

  It was still miserably close and hot outside, though twenty degrees cooler than it had been an hour ago. September in St. Louis, the unpredictable month in the schizophrenic city. The weather could swing to any extreme this time of year, sometimes within hours. Drizzle that was almost mist still rode the air. Wavering moisture was rising like restless spirits from the pavement. The concrete remained warm from the afternoon sun that had taken cover behind leaden clouds.

  Nudger swiveled on his heel and made a sharp U-turn to the left, opened the street door, and climbed the narrow, steep stairs toward his office door. The landing was empty. Since he’d only run downstairs for an early, doughy supper at Danny’s Donuts, he’d left the office unlocked. There was no way anyone could go upstairs without him or Danny noticing. The woman would be inside waiting for him. He was glad he hadn’t switched off the air conditioner.

  He left the heat of the landing and entered the coolness of his office.

  The office wasn’t exactly a rat-hole. Not exactly. Sparsely but rather neatly furnished, it had a desk, typewriter, file cabinets, a window, a door to a cramped half-bath. Didn’t have an anteroom. The blond woman was standing hipshot near his desk, staring at him.

  He said, “I’m Nudger.”

  She said, “It smells like doughnuts in here.”

  “From downstairs,” Nudger said. “Danny’s Donuts. You should try one. You should try everything once.”

  “Then I’m on the right track. This is the first time I’ve attempted to hire a private investigator.”

  Okay, no subpoena. She was a client. Prospective one, anyway. She might want Nudger to do something he didn’t want to do. Something dangerous. He was particular about the cases he accepted. Kept him poor but alive. And kept his nervous stomach—the reason he’d resigned from the St. Louis police department twelve years ago—from getting out of control and digesting itself.

  He flashed the old sweet smile and motioned with his arm for the woman to sit in the wooden chair in front of the desk. She smiled back and sat. He walked around behind his desk and lowered himself into his swivel chair. It squealed as it always did when he sat down. The woman winced at the piercing sound. He noticed her hair and clothes were damp from the rain. Wondered if she’d forgotten her umbrella.

  She said, “My name’s Adelaide Lacy, Mr. Nudger. Do you . . . er, have a first name?”

  “I do, but I never use it unless I have to. Keeps things simpler and less laughable. just Nudger will do fine.” He swiveled slightly in the chair, this way and that. Eeek eeek. “You have a problem you need help with, Miss Lacy?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  He looked at her more closely. She was upset about something, all right. All mussed by external and internal stormy weather, all wild blond hair and wild blue eyes, haunted by the lightning. That was what had driven her to Nudger’s office. She made Nudger, who was used to dumpy divorcees and pilfered cash registers, feel a little like Sam Spade. It was an inflating sensation.

  He waited for her to get to her problem. Didn’t push. Patience was essential in his business. She shifted position nervously in the chair. The action allowed a glimpse of startlingly pale legs with slender ankles. The word “thoroughbred” came to mind.

  “First off, are you busy now? I mean, can you take on a new case
?”

  Nudger nodded to the ankles. He could handle six new cases and still have time to make a quilt, but he wouldn’t tell Adelaide Lacy that. All of a sudden a sheet of rain hit the window hard enough to rattle the glass, as if out of malice. It was getting gusty outside. Nastier. Maybe blowing in another drastic change in the weather.

  He sized up Adelaide Lacy for potential to pay. She was wearing a plain navy blue dress. Her clothes were medium-price and made no pretense of high fashion. She was about thirty-five, neatly groomed except for the muss from the rain, and wore no wedding ring. She didn’t appear to be the sort you’d run to with the notion of financing a business venture, but she looked as if she could afford Nudger’s piddling fee. All things being equal, he’d take her case. The alternative was another round of conversation with Danny, another Dunker Delite. And another and another. Until he was swimming in grease and bitter coffee.

  “What exactly’s your problem, Miss Lacy? When I know that, I’ll be able to tell you if the job and I are compatible.” The old hard-to-get act.

  It worked; she got to the point. “These,” she said, and removed a square brown envelope from her purse and leaned forward to place it on his desk. “You better look, then I’ll explain.”

  He opened the damp envelope and withdrew an eight-by-ten black and white photograph of a downtown St. Louis street. He recognized the street. Locust Avenue, a north-south thoroughfare in the heart of the city. The photograph was sharp. There were no people or traffic in it, only buildings.

  Beneath the first photo was a second, a blowup of one of the buildings, the Arcade Building. It was an old but refurbished office building Nudger had been in more than once.

  There was a curious thing about that photograph. All the windows in the building seemed to reveal empty rooms. All except one. In that window was a heavyset, balding man seated at a desk. A pen in his hand was plainly visible. His head was bowed and cocked to the side slightly, a bit awkwardly, as if he might have been considering what he was about to write. He was in perfect focus; Nudger could count the buttons on his shirt. He looked familiar, but Nudger couldn’t place him. A ghost from a dream.

  Something about the photographs made Nudger uneasy. He placed them on his desk, squared them carefully with his fingertips. Looked up at Adelaide Lacy, who was staring at him with her intent blue eyes.

  “Can I get you something to drink, Miss Lacy?” Nudger asked. He wanted to slow the pace of this encounter. He was experiencing unpleasant intimations and needed time to think. He didn’t want to take on anything that might get him hurt or killed, but he knew he probably would. He had no choice, really. His unpaid bills were piling up. And Eileen’s lawyer, a snappy dresser with a dorsal fin, was getting serious about dragging Nudger back into court, where there would be a feeding frenzy around his meager assets. “I could run downstairs and get you a soda or cup of coffee.”

  “Call me Adelaide,” she said, forcing a smile. “And no thanks, I’m not thirsty. Last week a free-lance photographer named Paul Dobbs came to see me at my apartment with those.” She nodded toward the photographs on the desk. “He said he’d been commissioned by an architectural firm to take photos of certain downtown streets. His employer was interested in the buildings, nothing else. So Dobbs used special film and took forty-five-minute time exposures during the evenings, when it was still light but the streets were virtually deserted.”

  “Very long exposure time,” Nudger said.

  “And for good reason,” Adelaide told him. “As Dobbs explained it, at that slow exposure rate, occasional passing vehicles, or pedestrians, wouldn’t show up in the photo; they’d be moving too fast for their images to form on film. There could be a bank holdup on those streets and it wouldn’t appear in the photograph.”

  Nudger understood. The same held true of any movement inside the windows of the photographed buildings. That was why all the rooms in the Arcade Building appeared empty. All but one. Nudger felt a cold weight in his stomach. He liked the drift of this conversation less and less. Soon his insides would be forcibly reminding him that he was ill-suited by temperament for his work.

  He rummaged around in the top desk drawer until he found a roll of antacid tablets. Peeled back the aluminum foil and popped one of the chalky white disks into his mouth. Chewed lustily.

  Adelaide confirmed what he was thinking. “Dobbs told me the only way that man could appear so sharply focused in the window would be if he was as still as the building itself. If he was dead.”

  Nudger’s stomach kicked. Dead. Gee, he disliked that word. Felt uneasy about this case. Didn’t want this conversation to go any further.

  He knew he was at the balance point—one way or the other, in or out. Fish or cut bait, whatever that meant.

  More rain. A sudden, noisy downpour. Lightning flashed like a warning. Thunder rumbled like the threat of a collection agency.

  Nudger sighed. “What else did Paul Dobbs say?”

  2

  Adelaide shifted in her chair, obviously made uncomfortable by the thought of what she was about to tell Nudger. Nylon swished as she crossed her elegant legs the other way. Nudger drew a deep breath. She drew an even deeper one and began.

  “Dobbs noticed the man in the window in one of his photographs, blew up the scene, and took it to a friend who’s a reporter on the Post-Dispatch. Said he thought the man was dead. The reporter told him he was crazy, that the city leased that floor of the Arcade Building, and that the man in the photo was Virgil Hiller, the assistant city comptroller.”

  Oh-oh! Face and name suddenly connected in Nudger’s mind. And in a manner that caused anxiety. He popped another antacid tablet into his mouth and rolled it across his tongue to waiting molars.

  “The next day Hiller and his secretary disappeared,” Adelaide said, “along with half a million dollars in city funds.”

  Nudger watched a gray and white pigeon flap awkwardly to perch on the ledge outside the window. It wanted to get out of the rain. If pigeons had that much sense. It defecated on the ledge. Jesus, he hated pigeons! Winged rats!

  He said, “I read in the papers about the disappearance of Hiller and his secretary. And the money. That kind of thing happens. Maybe they’re on the beach somewhere in Bimini in the Bahamas.”

  “No,” Adelaide said firmly, and pursed her red, red lips. “They’re not anyplace like that.” She sounded certain.

  Nudger considered the Arcade Building photograph. “Hiller’s disappearance made Dobbs all the more suspicious of murder?” he ventured.

  “Yes. But the comptroller, and even Mayor Faherty, claimed they saw Hiller alive the morning after Dobbs’s photograph was taken.”

  “Dobbs buy their story?”

  Adelaide shrugged. “He had no choice. I mean, contradicting the mayor. . .”

  “Right. City Hall and all that.” Nudger wadded up last month’s telephone bill and hurled it at the window. It bounced off the glass near the upper right corner and the startled pigeon flapped away into the gloomy sky. “So what did Dobbs do?”

  Adelaide widened her luminous blue eyes in surprise, not at Nudger’s assault on the pigeon, but at his question about Dobbs. “Why, he came to me. He told me everything.” She seemed to realize suddenly that she’d gotten ahead of herself, and of Nudger. Smiled a nervous, shadowy smile and sat back. “Virgil Hiller’s secretary, the woman he supposedly ran away with, is my sister, Mary, Mr. Nudger. And I know what she really thought of her boss. She told me often enough he was a tyrannical creep. Slothful, repulsive, and incompetent. She despised him.”

  So did Nudger, and he’d never met the man. If Mary was Adelaide’s sister, and if she thought that way about Hiller, well, Nudger had chosen sides.

  “He’d maneuver Mary into a corner and try to feel her up every once in a while,” Adelaide said. “Mary was raped when she was nineteen. Violently. She never really got over it, never could trust any man completely. When Hiller made advances it drove her almost wild with revulsion. That struck
him funny, and it was only because she’d threaten to file a sex discrimination suit that he’d stop harassing her. Then, when a week or. so had passed, he’d begin again.”

  “You’re telling me she hates the man everybody thinks she ran away with.”

  “If she didn’t actually hate him, she was building up to it. I’m sure she’d have gotten another job eventually, when the pressure built high enough. Men don’t understand sexual harassment, Mr. Nudger.”

  Nudger couldn’t remember ever being sexually harassed. He supposed it could happen.

  “And because of how the rape. . . left her, it was especially rough for Mary,” Adelaide said.

  “Why didn’t she actually file charges against Hiller?”

  Adelaide shook her head. When she turned away from the window her eyes were gray in the dim light, crystal blue again when she faced the brightness. “Mary didn’t want to testify in court about that kind of thing again. Not ever.”

  “Yeah, I can understand that.” He remembered a few rape cases he’d testified in as a cop. The bruised bodies, the haunted eyes. Things were easier now for rape victims, but not easy enough.

  “Mary would never have run away with Virgil Hiller, Mr. Nudger. Not in five million years.”

  “Guess not,” Nudger said. “This photographer, Dobbs, where is he now?”

  “He’s disappeared.”

  Conversing with Adelaide Lacy was like a stroll into quicksand, Nudger thought bitterly.